PropTech is a burgeoning sector of the economy that has seen significant investment in the past 5 years, and investments seem to only be increasing. If you’re unsure of what proptech is, it’s essentially real estate technology. Here’s my list of the top 5 proptech companies in 2022:
- Leptonic, Inc.
- Propy
- Procore
- Bridgit
- Sugar
1. Leptonic, Inc.
Leptonic, Inc. has developed what is essentially the zillow of electric vehicle chargers, vending machines, and other small pieces of hardware. I am extremely partial to this company because I am a co-founder, but hey, this is my list, so of course I’m going to list it first 🙂 The micro-properties that income generating hardware and machines can be placed on are listed on the Micro Real Estate website that we have created. Listings for the hardware itself are also possible on the site.
2. Propy
Propy is a company focused on bringing non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to the real estate market. They have already accomplished some interesting milestones, like selling an apartment through a NFT transaction on a blockchain.
There is seemingly a solid connection between a real estate deed and an NFT, because a deed is non-fungible by its nature (i.e. 1 deed is typically only associated with 1 property and there are no duplicate deeds), so the digitization of deeds into NFTs just makes sense. These real estate NFTs are not as liquid as most NFTs, though there are certainly many NFTs that are less liquid and much higher value than most residences, though maybe not as expensive as some commercial properties.
If you are even somewhat aware of NFTs you’ve probably head of CryptoPunks selling for $50 million or more, which is…insane. Propy is reducing the insanity and has a real world use case for the technology of NFTs – by essentially creating NFTs that are backed by real physical property assets, so it is not just a digital image that you’d be buying and it could probably generate some additional income.
Though NFTs have gone into a bear market, I think it makes sense to buy fractional shares of a property with NFTs, so I expect that Propy will do well in the coming years, and I even hope to collaborate with them in the future. Maybe they’ll make NFTs of micro-properties too, and make it easy to invest in micro-properties.
3. Procore
In the construction technology side of the proptech umbrella is Procore – a construction management software suite. Project Management and Financials appear to be the core of their software offerings for both owners and builders, and it seems that the real value is the commutation and sharing of data between the owner and the builder, plus the ability to analyze the data with their software, so you don’t have to dance between a project management tool and a spreadsheet for analysis.
Procore might be useful for EV charge installations.
Though I haven’t used their software myself, with 10,000+ business users and 1,000,000+ projects worldwide, I suspect that they get repeat customers and that the software functions well. It also appears to be pretty clean and relatively simple to read. In addition, there are quality and safety aspects to streamline processes and reduce the risk during the construction process, since every high value project demands the use of risk tracking and mitigation.
4. Bridgit
Bridgit is also on the construction technology side of proptech and it seems like it would go hand in hand with Procore (so much so, that the two can actually be integrated if you have both). Bridgit is a workforce intelligence tool, so it can help plan and manage a construction company’s workforce for current and future projects.
Utilizing the skills of employees more efficiently can certainly help move a construction project (or any project, really) along more rapidly. Workforce planning (work breakdown structures) can help identify skill gaps in a workforce, which could lead you to hire someone new, or train your current employees in a skill that they need to complete the project.
If there’s a lot of EV charger installations, then Bridget would be good to manage the installers.
Both hiring and training can take weeks to months, especially if it is for a high demand position/skill, so identifying those gaps in your workforce should be done as soon as possible. Similarly, training and hiring cost money, but so do project delays, so Bridgit seems like it could definitely add value to a large project.
5. Sugar
Last but certainly not least is Sugar. It is a rental management system with an associated app for residents. The management software can help with things like controlling keys and building access, and it can also work as a rental payment system. On the resident app, residents can pay their rent, engage with the property manager for maintenance requests and there are community posts – think of an exclusive facebook and facebook marketplace for an apartment complex. Sweet.
Sugar might even help extract more value from your commercial real estate.
Wrapping Up My Top 5 PropTech Companies of 2022
Proptech is an industry on the rise and I’m excited to be a part of it. Though micro-properties have a very different function from residential or commercial properties, the market behaves in a similar manner and has the potential to be significantly larger in the future. NFTs are certainly interesting in the proptech space, with the potential to replace the long-standing deed paperwork.
Of course, with micro real estate, that means there will be plenty of opportunity for people to find CRE properties near them and for real estate agents to start dealing in micro-properties.
Construction tech in particular is burgeoning with possibilities for management tracking and potentially big data/Artificial Intelligence optimization in the future – just like the vending industry.
